Tag Archive for: climatechange

If every American participates, we will turn around the economy, our neighbors’ lives and the fate of the planet.

From planting trees to cruising in an EV, combating climate change is an American duty

Independence Day at its best is a call to action to leave our children an America as good as its promise.

This time of year makes me think about my family’s journey in this country. My father’s family is white. He descends from the youngest combatant at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. My mother’s family is Black. She descends from two Black Virginia statesmen who helped to rebuild the Commonwealth after the Civil War. One of them descended from Thomas Jefferson’s grandmother.

Today, both families, like many Americans, live at or near some version of the same address. It is that place where there used to be factories and when they shut down, what shot up was poverty, despair, suicide and opiate addiction. And as if all that were not enough to deal with, it keeps getting hotter. The floods come more often. The super storms do as well.

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Source: Chicago Sun Times

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America is now doing something to address climate change. It finally has the policies in place to both improve the environment and economy.

Opinion: America finally has momentum in the push for cleaner energy. We must not go backwards.

We are at the advent of the biggest economic revolution in generations. And it’s happening because America finally is doing something to address climate change.

Problem is, some politicians are dead-set on taking us backward again, just as we’re getting started.

Since the passage of landmark federal climate and clean energy policies just 22 months ago, companies have announced more than 300 major clean energy factories and projects across America — electric vehicle and battery manufacturing plants; solar panel and wind turbine factories and farms; and hydrogen fuel plants. East of San Diego, businesses are working with the state to turn the area around the Salton Sea into one of the country’s biggest producers of lithium, the core ingredient in batteries.

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Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune

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The three UC campuses leading the green transition have drawn on the collective brainpower of thousands of students and faculty to generate the most efficient, effective and equitable solutions for each campus.

How three UC campuses are phasing out fossil fuels

The plume of steam from UC Berkeley’s natural gas-fired power plant is a familiar sight on the skyline of San Francisco’s East Bay. But the facility’s days are numbered: The campus is on track to switch to an electrical heating system by 2028. As each UC campus prepares to publish its long-term plan for eliminating carbon emissions and transitioning to renewable energy, hear from sustainability experts on three campuses — Davis, Berkeley and Santa Cruz — that are phasing out fossil fuels ahead of schedule. 

Chancellor Cynthia Larive was barely a year into her tenure at UC Santa Cruz when a fast-moving wildfire nearly destroyed the campus. “It came to within a mile and a half of us. Everyone had to evacuate,” Larive recalled recently. “And if the wind hadn’t shifted overnight, I likely wouldn’t be talking to you from this office. The fires could have burned through campus to the sea.”

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Source: University of California

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Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio will save thousands of dollars a month in electricity costs after covering most of its roof with solar panels.

Churches discover solar power delivers spiritual and financial benefits

Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio will save thousands of dollars a month in electricity costs — multiplied many times annually — after covering most of its roof with solar panels in 2023.

But saving money wasn’t what Senior Pastor Garrett Vickrey emphasized in a video made to celebrate installation of the panels in September. Instead, he opened with the spiritual benefits of solar power.

“We wanted to make this move because we believe this is a great opportunity to be good stewards of God’s green earth. For us, this is a theological and an ethical issue,” Vickrey said. “It’s been exciting to see the response of our congregation — the excitement — and to hear their testimonials of experiences with solar power.”

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Source: Baptist News Global

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UCSB has joined with several of its sister UCs to ensure that disadvantaged communities are fully integrated into CA’s decarbonization efforts

A multi-campus collaboration will help the Golden State reach its energy goals

California is a global leader in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the state will need a lot of brainpower to ensure it achieves its grandest plans.

“California has ambitious decarbonization goals. But there’s always skepticism about whether they only target the wealthy,” said UC Santa Barbara statistics professor Mike Ludkovski.

UC Santa Barbara has joined with several of its sister UCs to ensure that disadvantaged communities are fully integrated into California’s decarbonization efforts. The $2 million project, funded by the state legislature, aims to develop models and tools to help accomplish this.

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Source: UC Santa Barbara

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The world needs to double the pace at which it’s deploying energy efficiency measures if it hopes to meet global climate goals, IEA says

IEA: World needs to pick up pace on energy efficiency

EFFICIENCY: The world needs to double the pace at which it’s deploying energy efficiency measures, such as installing heat pumps and LED lightbulbs, if it hopes to meet global climate goals, the International Energy Agency says. (Reuters)

CLEAN ENERGY: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signs a sweeping bill package that includes a 100% clean energy target by 2040 and shifts authority over wind and solar projects from local governments to state regulators. (Bridge)

SOLAR: Los Angeles looks to increase lower-income residents’ access to distributed clean energy by reducing community solar subscription rates and expanding generation at public and multifamily sites. (PV Magazine)

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Source: Energy News Network

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CALPIRG Students at UCSB hosted a campus event as a part of the organization’s Statewide Celebration of Clean Energy

Students host clean energy celebration calling on UCSB to commit to 100% clean energy by 2035

SANTA BARBARA, California – CALPIRG Students at UCSB hosted a campus event as a part of the organization’s Statewide Celebration of Clean Energy in support of getting UC Santa Barbara to commit to 100% Clean Energy by 2035.

The event featured speakers from the office of State Senator Monique Limon,the Associated Students Senate,  and CALPIRG Students, as well as a game and information station to engage the student body to learn about UCSB’s LEED Certified buildings and existing renewable energy.

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Source: Independent

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Solar panels are now being installed on the roof of St. Mark Presbyterian Church. It should easily power the church’s entire 7-acre campus.

Christians and climate change: Southern California churches preach very different messages

Crews started installing solar panels this week on the red tile roof at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach. Pastor Mark Davis said the project, once complete, should easily power the church’s entire 7-acre campus.

Last year, many of St. Mark’s 550 members attended a meeting, in keeping with Presbyterian doctrine, to vote on taking out a loan to finance the $200,000 solar project. There was some spirited debate about the financial implications, Davis said with a chuckle, but in the end members gave the project an enthusiastic green light. They see the panels as key to St. Mark’s goal of going completely carbon neutral by 2030.

“My message is that it’s an ethical imperative that we focus on the common good,” Davis said. At his church, he said, congregants are regularly encouraged to think about protecting “the flora and the fauna, the dirt, the water, the air — all of the things that it takes to sustain life.”

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Source: The Sun

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Instant milk chillers powered by solar panels are helping pastoralists in India's Thar Desert to keep their dairy fresh as temperatures rise.

Indian camel herders cash in with solar-powered coolers

The sun used to be a source of trouble for Indian camel herder Bhanwar Raika – but these days it is boosting his income, even as climate change brings ever hotter temperatures.

The pastoralist makes a living selling his herd’s milk but temperatures as high as 52 degrees Celsius (126 degrees Fahrenheit) regularly used to spoil it before he could sell it to the local dairy, about 80km from his home in western India’s Thar Desert.

But the 55-year-old’s fortunes changed last February when a solar-powered refrigeration system – called an instant milk chiller – was installed 2km away from Raika’s Nokh village in Rajasthan state.

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Source: Eco-Business

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The Square D Energy Center smart panel from Schneider Electric offers flexible control over solar arrays and battery storage.

As solar + storage ready becomes a title 24 mandate, smart technology helps flatten the complexity curve

If you’re a builder or electrician living in California, you’re probably already thinking about how to meet the State’s latest leap toward net zero: mandated solar and storage in every new house.

As part of the 2022 Energy Code, California has enacted a solar + storage ready mandate. Why? The answer is multi-faceted. The State lies on the front lines of climate change, with worsening wildfires, drought, power outages, and maxed-out energy demands.

California has had a solar PV mandate since 2019, and just passed another mandate phasing out gas-powered cars by 2035. Compared to most states, they’re taking the fast track to phasing out CO2.

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Source: Clean Technica

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